Wait.... The Raven Scholar was the best fantasy novel you read this year IN A YEAR YOU ALSO READ Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, one of the great fantasy books of the modern genre?!?!
Well THAT'S a recommendation. Damn.
(I have a vague feeling this post had something else in it but that one fact was so interesting it blew all the rest out of my head. Hatereads, shmatereads....)
I love this! Our media ecosystem has become so flooded with charlatans, dimwits, and narcissists - many of whom as you point out come from the upper echelons of Silicon Valley and politics (or are considered by these very people to be "worthwhile thinkers.") And a disproportionate share of their writing is drivel. These people rarely hear a word of disagreement from the sycophants that occupy their bubble-wrapped existence. When they do, they're remarkably thin-skinned about it. So mocking and needling them mercilessly is not only immensely satisfying, it benefits society overall.
Our era of having to take every harebrained, stupid idea seriously simply because of "something bad the [elites/mainstream media/academia/government] did blah blah blah" has sucked tremendously. Its long past time for those of us that can see the emperor has no clothes to not only state that as scornfully as possible, but to make it clear to the people who can't see it that they probably never will because of the weakness of their intellects.
I thoroughly enjoyed your Nuzzi hate-read thread, especially the screenshots. I stopped short of reading the book, (and I refuse to pay Lizza money or attention), but I've shamelessly followed the story. And I've read every review I could find, that wasn't behind a paywall. (I think Joan Walsh, The Nation, did it best). I appreciated your screenshots in the thread. The writing is so awful, and to get the full experience you have to read it with your eyes from the actual page. The reviewers were beyond kind to Nuzzi.
Here's to more hate reading and some serious book reviews in 2026. - Signed, Avid Reader
I loved The Raven Scholar so much that I basically read it and listened to it at the same time (the narrator does a marvelous job with accents and THAT 3rd person dialogue) to try to consume it even more. The Raven Scholar fucking rules.
[I listen to a lot of romance audiobooks and love to hate-read romances I already know are too white, cis, straight, american, therapy-speak-stuffed for me just to shit on the many ways the author failed to bring anything to the table]
"Hatereading" is a great way of describing how we feel reading and having to write about it. Reading might not even be the hardest part, making sense of their ideas is probably the hardest part...
I'm afraid these books aren't going to disappear from our feeds anytime soon because tech people's ability to come up with new ideas that don't make sense is quite impressive!
You do a great job describing the advantages and disadvantages of a social media thread versus a well crafted review in essay form. I found you based on the Nate Silver book thread.
I read a lot of books I don't agree with. I teach my students the form Hegelian dialectic, thesis>antithesis>synthesis. So the books I don't agree with help fill the antithesis section of a persuasive piece and sometimes were the spark to write what I really do think about a subject.
Here's when I wrote about Ben Horowitz's “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” and it had an interesting anecdote that he probably still thinks shows how clever he was. I had a different take. Ben Horowitz led me to Benedict Evans, who had some remarks on Amazon. Which led me to write about how Jeff Bezos hates paying taxes.
I've spent my entire 30 year career in Silicon Valley. Although I've had many senior leadership roles, at the end of the day, I'm a programmer and always will be a programmer. I have been since 1984, when my Dad and Mom brought home a 512K Macintosh computer. One thing I've noticed - especially since I've mostly been on the side that's actually building the software - is that these Silicon Valley billionaires are great at coming up with pithy expressions to retroactively describe some instance of success they've had.
Bezos is particularly good at this. He'll say things like "focus on inputs, not outputs" or "be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time." Then he'll tie that back to some success story that Amazon has had. But the reality on the ground was very, very different. In fact, back in the early days (late 90's through the mid-2000's) it had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of corporate-culture-omnipotence on his part. It was entirely sheer force of will, people putting in insanely long hours and employees just brute forcing it. Honestly, it was more like the experience the railway workers had in blasting through sheer walls of granite in the Sierra Nevada when building the continental railroad than it was a novel, innovative way of organizing a corporate culture.
Other tech companies are the same. The one critical thing they all get right is to get people to believe in the vision strongly enough that they will (metaphorically) work 12 hours a day to blast holes in walls of granite during winter snowstorms. But the stuff that shows up in the books these tech titans write? Mostly retroactive perspectives, dressed up to remove all the scars and burn marks acquired from the actual experience.
"Alinsky tells us that ridicule is our most potent weapon when confronting the powerful ... it sometimes seems like ridicule is the last, best weapon left at our disposal.": If so, we're in deep trouble indeed.
I like satire as well as anybody. My favorite film of all time just might be "Dr. Strangelove", and "Blazing saddles" and "Life of Brian" are way up there. The thing is, throughout my life (and well before - "Dr. Strangelove" was made before I was born), there's been no shortage of hilarious, widely publicized ridicule of the powerful, particularly in the USA: not only films but Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Tom Lehrer, and so, so many more, all the way up to the latest episodes of "South Park" and the late-night shows. But for the most part, things just keep getting worse. Maybe they'd get worse faster without the ridicule, but the point is, ridicule isn't cutting it.
I'm inclined to believe that's partly because ultimately, the powerful are powerful in large part because so many of the not-powerful support them. For example, if polling is to be believed, about a third of American adults still support the current occupant of the White House. Those people either don't get the jokes or get them just well enough to grasp that they're on the wrong side of them, so they despise the jokers.*
So sure, keep the ridicule coming, but understand that it would take a great deal more than ridicule to turn things around. (Likewise, it would take a great deal more than even millions-strong protest marches.)
Admittedly, all that is pretty heavy for a comment on a post about hatereading slop like Olivia Nuzzi's book. However, it's been on my mind for awhile.
*Just today, my partner and I were talking about Rob Reiner, who became famous for his work on "All in the family". My bigoted mother despised "All in the family" (and everything else by Norman Lear), because she grasped that Archie Bunker was a joke about bigots like her (for all that she looked down on blue-collar types like him). My partner's bigoted father liked "All in the family", because he apparently didn't grasp that Archie Bunker was a joke about bigots like him. (In fairness, her father isn't as intensely bigoted as my mother was. He has an eighth-grade education and has spent almost his entire life in rural Wisconsin. She had a lot less excuse.)
Please - do continue writing book recommendations. There's many stupid stuff out there that doesn't carry any intellectual weight and many stuff that gets widely recognised because the authors are popular but it's main arguments remain equally thin. What we're all here for I hope are the gems, the books, that we want to read again as opposed to the ones we should forget about quickly! So keep the good stuff coming. And here's my five book recommendations (not proper reviews, though): https://danielflorian.substack.com/p/five-books-to-read-before-the-end
Yes but are you ready to hate *write* with me the essay exploring how Trump unwittingly exemplifies many/most/all of the radical tactics in Alinsky's taxonomy?
Wait.... The Raven Scholar was the best fantasy novel you read this year IN A YEAR YOU ALSO READ Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, one of the great fantasy books of the modern genre?!?!
Well THAT'S a recommendation. Damn.
(I have a vague feeling this post had something else in it but that one fact was so interesting it blew all the rest out of my head. Hatereads, shmatereads....)
I agree. This immediately made me buy The Raven Scholar.
I love this! Our media ecosystem has become so flooded with charlatans, dimwits, and narcissists - many of whom as you point out come from the upper echelons of Silicon Valley and politics (or are considered by these very people to be "worthwhile thinkers.") And a disproportionate share of their writing is drivel. These people rarely hear a word of disagreement from the sycophants that occupy their bubble-wrapped existence. When they do, they're remarkably thin-skinned about it. So mocking and needling them mercilessly is not only immensely satisfying, it benefits society overall.
Our era of having to take every harebrained, stupid idea seriously simply because of "something bad the [elites/mainstream media/academia/government] did blah blah blah" has sucked tremendously. Its long past time for those of us that can see the emperor has no clothes to not only state that as scornfully as possible, but to make it clear to the people who can't see it that they probably never will because of the weakness of their intellects.
>> I also wrote a thread about Alex Karp’s The Technological Republic, but I didn’t post a link to Substack and can’t track it down now.
Looks like your Bluesky thread begins here:
https://bsky.app/profile/davekarpf.bsky.social/post/3lnauzotnd22l
I thoroughly enjoyed your Nuzzi hate-read thread, especially the screenshots. I stopped short of reading the book, (and I refuse to pay Lizza money or attention), but I've shamelessly followed the story. And I've read every review I could find, that wasn't behind a paywall. (I think Joan Walsh, The Nation, did it best). I appreciated your screenshots in the thread. The writing is so awful, and to get the full experience you have to read it with your eyes from the actual page. The reviewers were beyond kind to Nuzzi.
Here's to more hate reading and some serious book reviews in 2026. - Signed, Avid Reader
I loved The Raven Scholar so much that I basically read it and listened to it at the same time (the narrator does a marvelous job with accents and THAT 3rd person dialogue) to try to consume it even more. The Raven Scholar fucking rules.
[I listen to a lot of romance audiobooks and love to hate-read romances I already know are too white, cis, straight, american, therapy-speak-stuffed for me just to shit on the many ways the author failed to bring anything to the table]
I greatly enjoyed the thread on Bluesky of American Canto. Brilliant my man!
"Hatereading" is a great way of describing how we feel reading and having to write about it. Reading might not even be the hardest part, making sense of their ideas is probably the hardest part...
I'm afraid these books aren't going to disappear from our feeds anytime soon because tech people's ability to come up with new ideas that don't make sense is quite impressive!
You do a great job describing the advantages and disadvantages of a social media thread versus a well crafted review in essay form. I found you based on the Nate Silver book thread.
I read a lot of books I don't agree with. I teach my students the form Hegelian dialectic, thesis>antithesis>synthesis. So the books I don't agree with help fill the antithesis section of a persuasive piece and sometimes were the spark to write what I really do think about a subject.
Here's when I wrote about Ben Horowitz's “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” and it had an interesting anecdote that he probably still thinks shows how clever he was. I had a different take. Ben Horowitz led me to Benedict Evans, who had some remarks on Amazon. Which led me to write about how Jeff Bezos hates paying taxes.
https://medium.com/bull-market/amazon-minimizes-profits-because-ceo-jeff-bezos-hates-paying-taxes-e1e626b1b873
I've spent my entire 30 year career in Silicon Valley. Although I've had many senior leadership roles, at the end of the day, I'm a programmer and always will be a programmer. I have been since 1984, when my Dad and Mom brought home a 512K Macintosh computer. One thing I've noticed - especially since I've mostly been on the side that's actually building the software - is that these Silicon Valley billionaires are great at coming up with pithy expressions to retroactively describe some instance of success they've had.
Bezos is particularly good at this. He'll say things like "focus on inputs, not outputs" or "be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time." Then he'll tie that back to some success story that Amazon has had. But the reality on the ground was very, very different. In fact, back in the early days (late 90's through the mid-2000's) it had absolutely nothing to do with any sort of corporate-culture-omnipotence on his part. It was entirely sheer force of will, people putting in insanely long hours and employees just brute forcing it. Honestly, it was more like the experience the railway workers had in blasting through sheer walls of granite in the Sierra Nevada when building the continental railroad than it was a novel, innovative way of organizing a corporate culture.
Other tech companies are the same. The one critical thing they all get right is to get people to believe in the vision strongly enough that they will (metaphorically) work 12 hours a day to blast holes in walls of granite during winter snowstorms. But the stuff that shows up in the books these tech titans write? Mostly retroactive perspectives, dressed up to remove all the scars and burn marks acquired from the actual experience.
"Alinsky tells us that ridicule is our most potent weapon when confronting the powerful ... it sometimes seems like ridicule is the last, best weapon left at our disposal.": If so, we're in deep trouble indeed.
I like satire as well as anybody. My favorite film of all time just might be "Dr. Strangelove", and "Blazing saddles" and "Life of Brian" are way up there. The thing is, throughout my life (and well before - "Dr. Strangelove" was made before I was born), there's been no shortage of hilarious, widely publicized ridicule of the powerful, particularly in the USA: not only films but Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, Tom Lehrer, and so, so many more, all the way up to the latest episodes of "South Park" and the late-night shows. But for the most part, things just keep getting worse. Maybe they'd get worse faster without the ridicule, but the point is, ridicule isn't cutting it.
I'm inclined to believe that's partly because ultimately, the powerful are powerful in large part because so many of the not-powerful support them. For example, if polling is to be believed, about a third of American adults still support the current occupant of the White House. Those people either don't get the jokes or get them just well enough to grasp that they're on the wrong side of them, so they despise the jokers.*
So sure, keep the ridicule coming, but understand that it would take a great deal more than ridicule to turn things around. (Likewise, it would take a great deal more than even millions-strong protest marches.)
Admittedly, all that is pretty heavy for a comment on a post about hatereading slop like Olivia Nuzzi's book. However, it's been on my mind for awhile.
*Just today, my partner and I were talking about Rob Reiner, who became famous for his work on "All in the family". My bigoted mother despised "All in the family" (and everything else by Norman Lear), because she grasped that Archie Bunker was a joke about bigots like her (for all that she looked down on blue-collar types like him). My partner's bigoted father liked "All in the family", because he apparently didn't grasp that Archie Bunker was a joke about bigots like him. (In fairness, her father isn't as intensely bigoted as my mother was. He has an eighth-grade education and has spent almost his entire life in rural Wisconsin. She had a lot less excuse.)
Please - do continue writing book recommendations. There's many stupid stuff out there that doesn't carry any intellectual weight and many stuff that gets widely recognised because the authors are popular but it's main arguments remain equally thin. What we're all here for I hope are the gems, the books, that we want to read again as opposed to the ones we should forget about quickly! So keep the good stuff coming. And here's my five book recommendations (not proper reviews, though): https://danielflorian.substack.com/p/five-books-to-read-before-the-end
Yes but are you ready to hate *write* with me the essay exploring how Trump unwittingly exemplifies many/most/all of the radical tactics in Alinsky's taxonomy?
Boom. Have a great weekend!
Oooh, hit me up in January. Let’s discuss.